I know personally how owning a hosting company always makes you have the dream of operating your own datacenter. So, I thought of an idea. Lets build our own datacenter right here on HD.

Name: HD Datacenter (clever huh?)

However, we need to fill in the rest of the information.

Who will provide our bandwdith?
Who will provide server hardware?
What kind of building should we have?
Should we have raised floors?
What kind of weather proofing will we need?
Water does not work well with electronics what kind of fire supression?
What manufacture for cabnits?
Who will provide routers and switches?
How should the network be layed out internally and externally?

And, if there is any further pieces please add. So lets start building HD datacenter.

What about physical location?
Would we outsource the security, or have 24/7 guards on our payroll?

Exon,

Good Point. Where will it be? Atlanta, Dallas, New York, Chicago, LA? Where di you all think?

Security do we want 24/7 or are we going to outsource. What do you think we need your opinions.

Personally, I like the idea of Atlanta and 24/7 secuirty guards.

Who will provide our bandwdith? - Mzima, Internap, Level3 <--premium bandwidth, cogent, abovenet, xo, wiltel <--unmetered bandwidth
Who will provide server hardware? - Qsol, Dell
What kind of building should we have? - Lets take the US Bank building in LA
Should we have raised floors? - DUH!
What kind of weather proofing will we need? - The ones to protect us? :p
Water does not work well with electronics what kind of fire supression? - Closed cabinets should work here
What manufacture for cabnits? - Lets build our own with wood HEHE
Who will provide routers and switches? - Ciscos, Dells
How should the network be layed out internally and externally? Internally, and charge a **** load for cross connections and have tons of connections in the building.

24/7 security on payroll of course
LA is cooler because I said. Maybe somewhere in Orange County but same size of the US Bank lol

Who will provide our bandwdith? COGENT coz they're the cheapest + a few back up connections
Who will provide server hardware? rackmountsetc.com ... we (yphost.com) purchased about 12 boxes from them and are quite happy!

Cogent bandwidth has higher latency than most... so as long as we are dreaming, lets go premium. But, I do agree RME boxes are the way to go.

if your data center connection is connected with more backbone will make your connection running great

But it must be an expensive thing.

Well, I'd simply take all the tier-1 providers as you'd have the best latency I'm guessing.

Make it in LA, closer to me.

Stock up on SuperMicros and Dell. Reliable in my opinion.

Construct one floor of collocation only and one floor for dedicated / managed servers

BGP4 via JUNIPER routers

multi-homed gigabit connectivity with separate Gigabit and or 10 Gigabit connections to Level 3, Savvis, Mzima, Cogent, AT&T, and XO.

Best Around.

la has earth quakes, put it in NY the center of the world